love’s a state of mind

The poem frames "him" as subordinate in several ways, not just to the narrator ("i fuck him on the floor": not that getting fucked is inherently subordinating, but the narrator has all the agency in the phrase, "he" doesn't decide what happens or where) but also to "his wife". She has filled the house with chintz, meaning it wasn't his decision or his actions. "Filled" is also a choice of words that suggests that there is no space for him in the home: the only place left for him, not already filled, is the floor. To me this framing invokes the trope of the henpecked husband, whose wife has taken dominion over the home and who has ceded its control to her because it, as the domestic space, is "supposed" to be hers.

This trope, of course, is misogynist in its normative rendition: it reinforces gender essentialism, it erases the significant material benefits such "henpecked" men derive from the domestic labor of their spouses, and it dismisses women's expressions of suffering and attempts at negotiating terms for their relationships as "nagging." In the narrator's dismissal of the wife's possessions as "chintz" (frivolous, feminine, contrasted with what is "real") we can see this same misogyny at play.

The narrator's misogyny, and the central fact of the poem which is that the husband is getting fucked by someone other than the wife, quite possibly flip the power dynamics of the poem on their heads. The wife is now subordinated: both by her social marginalization based on gender (a marginalization which drives her into the home and confines her there, like OP so cogently points out! As "he" has run out of room in the home and can only get fucked on the floor, so has she run out of room socially; the only place she can control and make decisions like filling it with chintz is the home), and by the narrator who is fucking her husband in her home.

There's an additional dynamic in reading the narrator as male, which most readers seem to have done: it invokes the particular, bitter misogyny that men-loving-men sometimes direct at women expressing femininity. There's an envy to it, of course--straight and straight-passing women get to (are forced to) express desire for men, have sex with men, marry men, love and be loved by men. His wife gets to be his wife: the narrator gets to fuck him, in their home. Straight and straight-passing women also get to (are forced to) perform femininity: they can buy chintz and decorate with it, without being devastatingly punished for it like people presumed to be men are from the time they're babies. The envy mixes with misogyny to produce disdain, disgust, dismissal. We can read the narrator fucking him on the floor of their home as an expression of power and dominance (again, not that the fucking has to mean the narrator is topping, or that topping is inherently dominant, but the phrasing is stark: "i fuck him", the narrator acts upon him as an object/recipient), not just over him but over the wife in absentia as well.

Noting that "to keep it real" is AAVE, we can also introduce race as a potential lens; is the narrator, despite their dominant language, subordinated based on race in this dynamic? Is the narrator not just claiming a dominant role, but perhaps also stereotyped and limited into it as a Black person? Is the disdain of the chintz also an expression of class difference, of a rejection of the display of white wealth on the part of the wife? This is pretty speculative, of course: the use of AAVE could also be appropriative, which would suggest another tactic by the narrator to lay claim to masculinity and toughness, since non-Black people often use AAVE to try to invoke racist stereotypes of strength, violence and resilience.

I think one of the things that makes the poem so compelling for being so short is the struggle at the heart of it, this complicated jostling for power between three people and their actions over time (the wife "has filled" the house, in the past: the narrator fucks him in the present, perhaps in the habitual). Who controls the house? Who controls "him"?

(Look, I'm as starved for Armand content as any other Armand fan but looking for anything about him in this fandom feels like endless doomscrolling nowadays and I'm tryin' to stay optimistic, so pls DON'T shoot me on the spot, just hear me out)

So. Look back on every more or less significant s3 promo we've seen so far (that is to say, not "the vodka bottle" or "the fern" level). Yes, Armand's not there, but he's not not there, you know what I mean? Lestat comes to do the documentary — we see the "Armand told the truth" tattoo. The famous "I bet, I BET!" scene? Loustat are talking about Armand. Lestat finds out about the book? Fans in the bookshop are talking about Armand. Lestat reads the book (not official promo but still)? We see children dressed like Armand on Halloween. Armand's not even there most of the time, but he seems to haunt Lestat wherever he goes. He's not there, but he's influencing the narrative... knowing what we know about Armand, doesn't that seem in character for him? He's always trying to control the narrative, he's editing himself out of Claudia's diaries, out of Louis' life (pretending to be Rashid), out of Daniel's memories. Book!Armand was the one playing Death on stage, but show!Armand is in the audience clapping hands and pretending he is not the one who's more in charge than Santiago 'cause he's the director of every play. When we first see Armand and know it's him, it's because he chose to show himself. When we learn something about his past, it's because he chose to tell us. He thinks that's what being in power means: avoiding the spotlight, appearing to be submissive and controling everything people think about him. He's traumatized and scared, and having this sort of power is his idea of protecting himself. Ironically, that's also his downfall; no matter how hard he tries, truth comes out in the open and he's left without ability to protect himself by telling the truth about his intentions: neither Louis nor the audience believe him anymore. Imagine what a shock it's going to be when in s3 the audience gets to know Armand who cares about Lestat, who's worried about Louis, who's protective over Daniel and is not nearly as malicious as they believed him to be.

Keeping all that in mind, try to look at the plot like you've never read the books: show-only fans have to assume he's The Evil Guy, just like any book reader would after the last pages of Interview with the Vampire. And then comes The Vampire Lestat, and instead of cold calculating evil Armand we see him — full gremlin mode, yes, but also out of control, desperate to be loved, afraid to navigate this world alone. The contrast between iwtv!Armand and tvl!Armand is drastic, not to mention qotd!Armand. In iwtv we see him as the villian, in tvl we learn why he is who he is, and in qotd we finally see the truth: he's deeply flawed, yes, but he's not evil, he never was. It is a journey of getting to know and love Armand in the books, and it is a wonderful experience because of all the plot twists you could not predict.

And it seems to me RJ and his team are trying to recreate this journey for both show-only fans and book readers, which is... ambitious, to say the least. We already know they're paranoid about spoiling anything: ffs, they were worried about Eric hinting at Talamasca appearance in s2, Sam even said it was a "pretty big spoiler". Who tf cared about Talamasca at that point of time? That's why it comes as absolutely no surprise for me that they're gatekeeping Armand this season: loumand interacting? After the s2 finale? Shocking spoiler for show-only fans. The role Armand plays in Lestat's past? Needless to say, big spoiler, considering they showed us next to nothing about Lestat's past. Devil's Minion? Spoiler of all spoilers, if you remember their panic when an interviewer mentioned Devil's Minion and asked about their storyline in s3 (interview with Assad, Delainey, Sam and the writers).